“Financial Integration will lie in the sustained use of financial inclusion tools made available with the consumers”, said Shri Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog during the CII Fintech and Digitisation Seminar scheduled today.
In its 125th year of service to the nation, CII, in line with the vision laid out by the Prime Minister of India and keeping in mind the complexities created by COVID, had organised the 1st FinTech and Digitization Seminar with the theme ‘Preparing for the Post Pandemic World’ today.
Speaking at the seminar, Shri Amitabh Kant said, that the biggest thing will be solving Financial Inclusion and then achieving Financial Integration. He mentioned that “FinTech industry in India can solve India’s unique needs like financial inclusion, access to credit, limited insurance reach and also can serve as a solution provider of choice for global financial sector to emerge as one of FinTech’s global hubs of choice, and that is really the potential of India going forward”.
He further added that, Financial integration will be achieved by achieving parity across 3 layers, firstly, access to basics i.e. savings, equity markets and insurance; secondly availability of products and services and thirdly ability to choose and customize.
Shri Amitabh Kant highlighted that the key areas which need to be actualized to achieve financial integration are really to make ourselves presence-less, paperless and seamless with respect to on-boarding of customers. He also said that there is a need to address the prevalent KYC-paradigm and make it highly cost-effective, secure and real-time, by leveraging advances in technology.
He also spoke on the need to localise digital offerings by FinTech companies and allow for local dialects, languages for a holistic financial integration.
He emphasized that in India, vernacular was the way forward and that financial integration efforts were needed to localise the offerings and allow for local languages and dialects as opposed to using only English for deeper depth, wider audience and greater levels of customers.
“Forget English, Go Vernacular”, Shri Amitabh Kant said.
He also highlighted that through usage of technology and digitization of processes, under DBT, Government has seamlessly transferred INR 11.1 lakh crores in 426 operational schemes across 56 ministries, thus saving INR1.7 lakh crores by avoiding leakages. As Indian Fintech market matures, there will be huge opportunities for incumbents and new entrants to move up the adoption curve and expand the Indian Fintech pie.
“To my mind favourable demographics, active start-up ecosystem and increasingly knowledgeable workforce, rising aspirations of the Indian millennial combined with the unique Financial Services ecosystem, provides several opportunities for FinTech companies to adapt and innovate” said, Shri Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog.
He urged the member that, India has the digital infrastructure in place and now is the time to take quantum jump forward so as to become a role model to the rest of the world.
Speaking earlier at the seminar, Mr Sanjiv Bajaj, Vice President, CII, said that the country today, is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of FinTech and Digitization than it was about a decade back. He further added that the country’s digitization and technological efforts should be used in MedTech and in integrating hospitals, clinics and doctors.
Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII speaking during the Inaugural session, highlighted that, deriving inspiration from the 5 ‘I’s as laid out by the Prime Minister of India, CII has formulated its theme and agenda for the year 2020-21. He also said that, “the spread of the Pandemic and the emergence of ‘New Normal’ has made it imperative to digitally transform the various aspects of economic activities”.
Speaking about the ‘Geography is History due to Technology’ he said that “the changed scenarios will demand companies to adapt technology and transform new business models to survive in this new world where geography suddenly will not matter as much”.
12 June 2020
New Delhi